Garden Wall

2023

watercolor      

 16,1 x 28,6 cm

April 2022

"For The Grand Spiritual Rabbit"

Chrom VI Idar-Oberstein

works from the pandemy years

As a late follower of an infinite number of good painters over the centuries (however they have been praised or ignored or forgotten by art history fiction, they have been there !) I know anything has been done an expressed in painting. But beauty is still the same, pain is still the same.

Painting was never meant for really solving a problem.

If something feels tired and worn, just turn it upside down, name it in a different way and go on. Just do it again and something different you could not imagine will appear.

All the important serious artists seem to work in social media, in installation, even in genetic engineering. The artificial intelligence is breaking through in art with the sweet smile of bunnies glowing green in the dark.

We - the 'cultivated people' - agree and accept the algorithm as self-evident. 

Probably exactly like 15th century christian 'cultivated people' felt about God. Given order feels so natural to us.

The disatrous loss of bio-diversity, the increasing reports of worldwide natural disasters are raging around the shelter of my studio. I don't sleep so well. I am a morning painter and I don't switch on the radio before noon.

Sometimes I think that painting is not relevant anymore. Probably art in general will not be relevant by any means in a very close future.

It's not that I don't care... but I trail away in a painting problem and suddenly I remember a Felix Valloton painting. This time it's me smiling and I think: "Felix, I know exactly what you felt 100 years ago." It feels like brotherhood.

Then suddenly I have a demon I did not actually call standing close to me asking: "Is this appropriate ..?!"

Painting in contemporary circumstances feels like non-stop leaning slightly against a closing door to keep it open.

Sometimes suddenly I am happy - even still very private the situation has an unexpected quality of subversion. Sometimes painting feels so superbly 'analog'.

Still now sometimes I am free and playful like a kitten chasing crumbled paper balls, and my spirit is still that of a young predator. 

Well, a domesticated on - kick me or feed me...!

I can speak so trivial about my painting because my painting is trivial.

My subjects are banal and very well known.

O JUN told me the japanese term is 'sappukei' - 'sunday painting', and I think we share the same very positive appreciation of this word.

Hans Benda 2019, for the exhibition catalog of

"Can't be what it looks like - So mieru kedo arienaiyo ne"  O JUN & Hans Benda, Galeria Finarte, Nagoya, Japan

Black Beach

2021

oil / canvas     

105 x 120 cm

Talking To The Nurse

2020

oil / linnen     

115 x 130 cm

Sept.2016

"Regards To The Giant Rabbit"

Chrom VI Karlsruhe